"That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all.
.....
What I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most."
- Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye (J D Salinger)

03 July 2007

How are ya?

Of late, I've noticed that people, when asking you how you are or how work/life is, don't really listen to what you say. Questions like these more or less are like time-fillers, the conversational equivalent of something like a newspaper in an office lobby, or 'uncomfortable silence'-busters, because people just have to say something, even if it's crap, when they're in the same room as someone they know.

I've often been in situations like these, especially at office, while waiting for lifts or when bumping into colleagues in a corridor or the cafetaria. They generally ask me how I am, and don't really listen when I reply. This always pisses me off, probably because I not only listen to what people say, but also impart pearls of wisdom while talking to them.

After consciously observing this for a while, I wanted to try and see how it would be, doing the same thing to others. One day, a golden opportunity presented itself in the form of a colleague who happened to be in the office lift with me. When the lift doors opened to my floor, I got out and asked him "Hey... how's work man?" and turned immediately to go, and the poor guy opened his mouth to reply but didn't have an opportunity to answer me, since the lift doors closed. I felt really bad. The colleague in the lift was a nice guy.

Realizing that I couldn't do this to people without feeling bad, I've instead started mumbling nonsense whenever someone asks me how I was or how life/work was... random stuff like "President", "Leipzeig", "Fisichella", "Steinbeck", "Foo Manchu", "Forty Nine", "Dr. Seuss", "Roald Dahl", "Imbruglia", "Guten Tag", "Portico", "Alsace", "Kipling", "Civil War", or whatever crops up in my head at the moment, and out of a thousand times, only probably once or twice did people stop to ask me what I said.

People, I tell you. The phony bastards don't really give a damn how you are.